From the Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibit featured original hand-colored etchings created for Geisert’s book, “Roman Numerals I to MM”, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1996. Lessons of how to count Roman numerals are filled with fanciful depictions of pigs in hot-air balloons, pigs playing tug-of-war. and pigs romping about the farmyard.

Image: Arthur Geisert, Roman Numerals, Jacket Front, 1996, hand-colored etching, The Arthur Geisert Collection. Gift of Arthur and Bonnie Geisert, made possible by Jack and Mantea Schmid.

Fiber artist Michelle Sales expresses herself forcefully with dyed and heat treated synthetic fiber in her exhibit “Accumulations”, in the Kris Mozena McNamer gallery at the Dubuque Museum of Art. Photojournals of decay and erosion created during travles to Central and South America influence her work. Each piece of material that Ms. Sales manipulates and then sews together represents a memory that she recalls while creating her work. The exhibition work provides viewers with a chimerical yet corporeal environment of human forms including torsos, arms, and life-size figures to examine.

Image: Paladin 3, 2003, 74 x 24 x 12 in., Thermoplastic materials, dyed and stitched, wire, transferred text, found objects, collection of the artist

This exhibition featured works from the Museum’s significant collection of Iowa Regionalist, Grant Wood. Wood’s work celebrates the rolling landscape of rural Iowa and gives dignity to the seasonal labors of the farmer who works the soil. Wood’s work is also infused with a gentle humor that viewers can easily identify with.

Dubuque’s Grant Wood Collection was established in 1935 when the Carnegie-Stout Public Library, using a bequest of Mary E. Lull, purchased two important paintings: “Appraisal” and “Victorian Survival.” It was the first public collection in Iowa to acquire major works directly from Grant Wood. Throughout the history of both organizations, the Museum and Library have enjoyed a longstanding professional partnership. This relationship was capped in 1999, when, through a long term loan by the Carnegie-Stout Library, the Dubuque Museum of Art became the caretaker of the Woods and other paintings. The Museum was entrusted with the collection because they could “provide the best facility and opportunities for the community to enjoy these treasures.”
Other works in the exhibit came to the Museum through the generosity of Museum patrons, Dr. Randy Lengeling and Bob and Barbara Woodward. The exhibit included Wood’s early work, as a student exploring a variety of aesthetic models during his travels in Europe, his iconic and familiar Regionalist images of the Midwestern landscape and rural folk that he loved and respected, and the set of lithographs completed during the last four years of his life. Also included in the exhibition were whimsical flower pot sculptures, “Lillies of the Alley” composed of nuts and bolts found in Wood’s alley. Other objects in the exhibition included books illustrated by Wood and a brochure he published to advertise the Stone City Art Colony.

Image: Tree Planting Group, lithograph, 1937, Gift of Dr. Randall Lengeling, 99.12.02

Pioneering photographer Edward S. Curtis captured the daily and ceremonial existence of the Native Americans during the period 1900-1930. His ambitious project was endorsed by then President Theodore Roosevelt and financed by JP Morgan. Curtis’ goal was to produce a 20 volume set of ethnographic text illustrated with high quality photogravures.

The exhibition consisted of 20 images from the Complete Portfolio. The Portfolio came to the Dubuque Museum of Art once again through the auspices of the Carnegie-Stout Public Library. Former Dubuque native, Mrs. Emma H. Ward gave the portfolio to the Library as a memorial to her late husband, Hiram Pond Ward. This Portfolio came under the care of the Museum in 1999, with other significant works from the Library’s collection.

After languishing for years unnoticed, the Curtis photographs resurfaced in the 1970’s and are now recognized as one of the most significant records of the Native American cultures ever produced.